EHJ March 2004, pages 68-71
Nine out of every 10 children employed in part-time work are working illegally, with many getting no health or safety protection. Stuart Spear reports on a growing crisis in child employment

Last April, 14-year-old Sam Crosby's life changed forever. A keen footballer with aspirations to turn professional, he had started a job the year before with his local butcher in Staffordshire.

At first he was cleaning boards, floors, walls and the mincer when it was dismantled. "I used to be scared of the mincer because the blades are that sharp. It looked really horrible. But then I moved on to using the mincer and the meat slicer. I didn't really get any training. I just got told, 'this is how you do that, try it'. So I did," said Sam. Then tragedy struck while he was mincing meat for sausages. "I was mincing pork strip. I had a plaster on my thumb and it got caught. The barrel of the machine was so strong it just dragged my hand into the machine." Sam lost all his fingers and the thumb on his right hand, including his knuckles. His employer was fined £7,500 for health and safety breaches and £500 for illegally employing him.

The tragedy of Sam's case has exposed a hidden world of child employment which, in most cases, is illegal because it is not properly registered with local authorities. There is a growing belief among child employment experts that, because much of children's work is outside the law, 13- to 16-year-olds in part-time jobs are failing to get the sort of health and safety protection that adults enjoy. Many of these children may not be covered by their employer's insurance, giving them no right to compensation in the event of an accident.

The government estimates that at any given time between 1.1 million and 1.7 million school-aged children are working part-time. Margaret Berry, an independent EHO who has studied the child labour market in Greater Manchester, believes that, out of this group, there are many more children like Sam who are being asked to do unsuitable jobs for long hours, where no risk assessment has been carried out. She points to other serious workplace accidents involving children. Ryan Pettigrew,14, died while delivering newspapers on a road with a 96km/h speed limit and no pavement. In 2002, a 14-year-old suffered severe burns while refilling a generator on a food stand with petrol. And five years ago, a building firm was found guilty of employing a 14- and a 15-year-old to remove asbestos from a west Yorkshire factory.

At the heart of the problem is a piece of legislation that is over 60-years-old. The Children and Young Persons Act 1933 places a duty on local authorities to protect children at work. Child employment officers working for the local education authority (LEA) should be told the child's age, hours worked, and given proof of parental consent. An employer's statement is also needed, confirming that a proper risk assessment has been carried out. Only then will the council issue a permit so that the child can work legally.

Yet a report into the regulation of child employment, published last month by the better regulation task force, has revealed that, in Blackburn, only 4 per cent of children were found to have permits and just 6 per cent in Cumbria and 7 per cent on north Tyneside. According to Dr Jim McKechnie, of the child employment research group at Paisley University, who has been researching child labour for 15 years, the national picture is no better. He estimates that around 90 per cent of children nationally are working part-time outside the law because employers fail to check for council work permits.

The main reason for the extraordinarily low number of permits being issued, claims the task force, is that current legislation on child employment is so overly complicated that very few people understand it. Since the act was published in 1933, there have been 24 subsequent pieces of domestic legislation, along with an EU directive and a UN resolution. To make the situation even more impenetrable, a TUC report, also published last month, has revealed that more than nine out of 10 councils currently have bylaws in force covering the type of jobs children are allowed to do and at what age, that conflict with national legislation. National law states that no child under 13 can be legally employed and yet 37 per cent of councils surveyed have bylaws allowing children as young as 10 to do part-time work.

Describing the current confusion as "frightening", Simon Petch, chair of the task force group that investigated child employment regulation, believes that employers, parents and children just do not understand how to comply with the law. His report has called on the Department for Education and Skills to start work on consolidating the law by September.

"Even when talking about quite reputable companies, they did not seem to know what the law is, so our starting point has to be to consolidate and simplify the law," Mr Petch told EHJ. "We also think that this may be a hangover from the attitude that it is only children so it does not matter... It is time to say that children's introduction to the world of work is something we should be taking far more seriously."

Dr McKechnie agrees that there is a need for society to change its attitudes about child employment. He believes that we have too rosy a view of the children's job market and are inclined to see work as building a child's independence, so good for it. But he feels this may not always be the case.

"The stereotyped image of children under 16 is that they deliver newspapers and help out at the shop, so we think what we are looking at is children's jobs. But all the research from the 1990s on has destroyed that myth," explained Dr McKechnie. "In many cases, they are working in jobs that you would equate with the adult labour market and they work alongside adults and yet they are treated differently because they come under different legislation."

A study by Kent CC into child employment for the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) found that, in reality, only 20 per cent of working children were doing a paper round. Retail accounted for 19 per cent, while 10 per cent of children in work were doing hairdressing and 9 per cent had cleaning jobs. Catering, office work and hotel work made up most of the remainder with smaller numbers of children working on farms, market stalls and stables.

The study, published in 2001, also found that these jobs were falling outside the health and safety enforcement regime. Researchers found that, even when the LEA issues a work permit, it is very rare for the council to check that a risk assessment is actually being adhered to. The study found that 66 per cent of LEA respondents had never followed up a risk assessment and 31 per cent said they would only follow it up if an issue arose. EHPs were also failing to routinely ask whether children were being employed during inspections. Ms Berry believes that the profession is just not thinking about children when doing inspections.

Another problem is that children typically work at weekends or after 3.30pm when there is less chance of an EHP actually finding them on the premises.

The study also revealed poor communication between environmental health departments and LEAs, with nearly a third of child employment officers claiming they never liaised with their health and safety teams. The report prompted the HSE to issue a local authority circular calling on EHPs to be more aware of child employment issues when doing routine inspections and for better communication between environmental health teams and the LEA.

But despite the circular, Ms Berry believes there has been little improvement. Her research nducted last year, revealed that 61 per cent of EHPs she interviewed did not routinely ask if children were being employed. She also found that, even if a child was seen being employed, only 59 per cent of EHPs would ask for evidence of a risk assessment and 35 per cent would take no action other than referring the matter back to the education welfare officer. "Here we have evidence that EHPs are not complying with the local authority circular. At a time when officers are pressurised with high workloads and elusive performance indicators, it is much easier to refer a matter onto another party than to deal with it yourself," said Ms Berry.

According to Ian Hart, chair of the child employment officer's national network and a child employment officer for Surrey CC, even when the case is referred back to the LEA and there is a successful prosecution, fines are so derisory under the Children and Young Persons Act that it has little effect. Magistrates are restricted to maximum fines of £1,000 for each offence.

Since Mr Hart started at Surrey CC three years ago, he has prosecuted 23 companies for employing children illegally. What is surprising about these cases is the number of big name companies that have been breaking the law. They include McDonald's, Tesco, Forbuoys Newsagents, Thorpe Park, Woolworths, Sainsburys and the brewing giant Whitbread, which last March pleaded guilty to 31 offences relating to the illegal employment of schoolchildren in bars and was fined a total of £13,500. "To a big company, that is not even a slap on the wrist," said Mr Hart. "The only way you are going to get shareholders to sit up and listen is when you start giving them fines of £50,000."

In addition to increasing fines, Mr Hart also believes that LEAs have to be given more powers to protect children. He told EHJ: "At present we have no right of entry. We have no powers to seize records in relation to child employers. We cannot demand to see a risk assessment and, if we don't have these powers, how are we possibly going to enforce the legislation?"

Resourcing is another problem. With only around 25 full-time child employment officers in the country, working in county councils and unitary authorities trying to protect around 1.5 million children, very few cases will end up in court. Child employment officers are also responsible for monitoring performance licence applications for children taking part in modelling, stage production and films like the latest Harry Potter, so there is little spare time to deal with more mundane health and safety breaches. "We need to do more to protect children. Employers are more aware of their requirements to protect adults than they are to children and, as a result of that, children are at a greater potential risk," said Mr Hart.

There is even uncertainty about the number of children under 16 injured each year while in part-time jobs. HSE figures put the number of occupational health injuries to children at 22 for last year. But nearly all the independent research carried out in this field points to a high level of underreporting. A study by the TUC found that 24 per cent of boys working stated that they had suffered a workplace accident. Studies by O'Donnell and White in 1998 and Joliffe et al in 1995 found even higher accident rates at 44 and 36 per cent.

As part of her research Ms Berry interviewed 131 children working in the Greater Manchester area. She found 19 per cent claiming to have had a work- related accident. "These figures fit in with the findings of the Labour Force Survey which found that workers working low numbers of weekly hours suffered substantially higher rates of injury than those working longer hours," said Ms Berry. She believes that there are likely to be far higher rates of underreporting of accidents in jobs where children are not registered with local authorities and so are working illegally.

The consensus among child employment experts is that, for children to be properly protected, there is a need for a radical overhaul of legislation. Carolyn Hamilton, director of the Children's Legal Centre at the University of Essex, wants to see children given the same health and safety protection as adults. "You have to tear up the 1933 act and start again," she said. "We should have a national insurance card from 13 and let children be treated like any other employee. At least you would then know who is being employed and at what rate."

In the meantime, Ms Berry feels that EHPs needs to be more aware of the scale of the problem. "EHPs need to be thinking about children being employed when doing visits and need to be willing to take action when necessary."

But this is all too late for Sam. He has lost faith in the health and safety regime and is advising friends to ask questions about training. "Don't just watch them do it and try to do it yourself. It is a lot harder than you think," he warns other child workers. His family is trying to raise money for an operation in America where they hope to save his wrist movement and provide him with a prosthetic.